Author Archive: Teya Vitu

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Quench your thirst at Tap + Bottle

July 2, 2013 |

Tap + Bottle soft opening. In its first week of business, T&B went through 46 kegs of beer. Photo by Andrew Brown.

You’d swear there is a brewery or vineyard out back at Tap + Bottle, 403 N. 6th Avenue.

Though they don’t brew beer or tend to grapes, owners Rebecca and Scott Safford are playing right into the turn of the century ambiance firmly in place at their newly opened beer and wine tasting room and bottle shop.

You’ll find exposed brick walls and original wood flooring dating back to when Tucson had maybe 10,000 inhabitants. And now, a spacious bar, beer glasses and growlers on metal shelves, a giant chalkboard menu, and a 10-foot long community table grace the restored building. The Tap + Bottle logo is on the brick wall, appearing as if it’s been there for 100 years. The top half of the logo, created by Dennis Fesenmyer at Fezlab, looks like a keg and the bottom half like a bottle cap.

“This is our beer baby,” says Rebecca, the Safford who you’ll most likely find working at Tap + Bottle. “We got the idea of doing this while traveling up and down the West Coast and in Colorado. We discovered a lot of bottle shops where you can purchase craft beer bottles for take out or stay and drink them on the spot.”

Having opened in late June, Tap + Bottle is a bar but not really a bar. No hard liquor, just beer and wine – on tap and also available by the bottle (or can) to take home. With nearly 400 varieties of bottled beer and 20 tap beers, the concept is clear. Provide an impressive inventory of harder to find beers from around the country and world, add a local feel in an historic setting, and Tap + Bottle becomes a one-of-a-kind destination in Tucson.

The 20 craft beers on tap continually rotate out, some on a daily basis. Two kegs are always “on deck” ready to be tapped once a line opens up. One cask condition beer is also available. The beer goes into the cask flat and the beer’s yeast creates the carbonation. Other elements can be added to the cask such as orange peel or blueberry. In the future, they hope to convince local Tucson breweries to brew one-off varieties just for Tap + Bottle.

While they do an excellent job of celebrating beer, they also feature six wines on tap – three red and three white. Their bottled wine section includes over 70 choices.

Don’t expect to find Tap + Bottle within the 4th Avenue or Congress Street bar scene. It’s just north of the 6th Avenue underpass, which is not exactly a spot screaming location, location, location.

“We’re totally one block off,” Rebecca says. “We want to be something different. We’ve watched Borderlands Brewing and EXO Roasting closely. Nearby, they’ve created their own culture and scene without being in the middle of it all.”

Tap + Bottle shares a building with EXO and Old Market Inn Tile Shop. Old Market tile decorates the restroom and denotes the street addresses for all three businesses.

Rebecca and Scott Safford. Photo by Andrew Brown

It makes sense how Rebecca and Scott got into the beer and wine business. They met at the Tap Room at Hotel Congress and live at the Ice House Lofts near Barrio Brewing.

“We grew into it together with our love of beer and love of learning about beer and wine,” she says. “We both did Cicerone wine certification training. We studied together. We talked about it a lot. It really did happen together. It was not one person saying I love beer and now you have to love beer, too.”

As expected, this is a true joint venture in beer proficiency right down to their chalkboard menus detailing not just the beer, brewery and price but also specifying IBU and ABV values (International Bitterness Units and Alcohol by Volume – the percent alcohol). Flip their branded coasters over and you’ll find beer tasting note sheets to mark down sweetness, bitterness, hoppiness, and on the wine coaster, intensity, body, flavors and hue.

Rebecca and Scott are nose-to-nose about having nine different glasses for beer and a stemless tumbler for the wine. Depending on which glass best suits a given beer, you will get your brew in English pub, Belgian or “Munique” glasses in sizes ranging from 10.5  to 23 ounces. Get the right curves in the glass for the right beer and drinking becomes all about aromatics and smell along with the taste.

“It starts with what not to serve it in,” Scott says. “We say, be good to the beer.”

For those less concerned with stemware and more oriented toward take out or volume, you can buy 4-pint and 2-pint Tap + Bottle growler bottles to take along and for later refills.

Like at EXO Roasting, where they offer coffee tastings by flights, you can sample a flight of four 5-ounce beers at Tap + Bottle. Well-briefed employees happily detail any of the nuances.

Not just anybody works at Tap + Bottle. The Safford application process resembles a college essay exam. They’re less concerned with where you’ve worked, your references or your record. Where potential employees score their points is with answering application questions such as “What is your favorite style of beer and why?” and “What do you believe is the most overrated beer and why?”

“We want to hear how they explain it,” says Rebecca.

With a plethora of beer and wine tasting options at Tap + Bottle, some friendly guidance from the staff sounds just about right.

 Tap + Bottle is open from 11 am to 11 pm  Monday to Thursday, 11 am to midnight Friday and Saturday, and noon to 6 pm Sunday. Find them online at www.thetapandbottle.com

Bloom Night

July 1, 2013 |

Peniocereus greggii. Photo by David Olsen

The email hits your inbox early in the afternoon. Your heartbeat elevates. Nobody died, nobody was born. Nobody you know won Powerball. In fact, this email doesn’t even concern a person. It’s all about the most nondescript, inconspicuous, seemingly lifeless branches you’ll find – or likely not ever notice – on the desert floor.

It’s that time of year again for the 22nd Annual Bloom Night at Tohono Chul Park, 7366 N. Paseo Del Norte, just north of Ina Road. Unlike any other Tucson event, nobody has a clue when Bloom Night will fall, other than somewhere between mid-May and mid-July.

People instantly cancel whatever plans they have for that evening for a close-up encounter with a blooming peniocereus greggii. Those of you in the know realize we’re talking about the Night Blooming Cereus, fondly called the Queen of the Night.

Why all the hullabaloo? This flower blooms for a single night. Palm-sized white flowers start to unfurl at about 5pm. The flower is open in full bloom by 8pm for a single night.  Then the  flower dies as the sun rises the next morning. And  it’s all over until next year. Or maybe it’s not.

For promotion’s sake, the Queen of the Night in the Sonoran Desert bloom together. The greater majority do bloom on a single night, but Tohono Chul has had years with two Bloom Nights—when half of the plants bloom on one night and the other half the following night or two months later.

“There’s no rhyme or reason,” Marcia Ring, Tohono Chul’s marketing director says, “They’re very unpredictable.”

For 364 days a year, the night blooming cereus look like dead sticks. They are nothing more than four-sided branches up to three-feet long but usually shorter. They grow in haphazard directions, usually more horizontally, close to the ground, often tangled with another plant.

They have no attractive quality whatsoever – except for that gorgeous white flower that gets Tucsonans to drop everything at a moment’s notice to have a look. Nobody does that for a rose. What is it about the Queen of the Night?

“A rose does not have the determination this plant has,” Ring says. “If you think about it, this ugly, nasty, little plant collects and saves its resources for a year so it can create a bloom that lasts for only one night.”

But that in no way means every Queen of the Night blooms. Tohono Chul has 350 night blooming cereus, the world’s largest collection. Last year, Bloom Night produced 89 flowers on 42 plants. Ultimately, 58 plants produced 146 flowers in 2012.

Out in the Sonoran Desert, the only place this plant grows, you usually don’t find more than one night blooming cereus per acre. Keep that in mind when you consider this: the plants seem to communicate with each other. The blooms from plant to plant mature at different rates. Then all of a sudden a faster growing plant will slow down so that all the Queen of the Nights can bloom the same night. On top of that, they are pollinated by the hawk moth, which is born that very night, collects pollen from one plant and delivers the pollen to another plant on another acre.

Ring is master of Tohono Chul’s Bloom Watch List, which has about 11,000 names on it. You can add your name to the Bloom Watch List at bloomwatch2013.org.  The Bloom Watch starts with email updates every two weeks, then once a week and then daily when the buds near blooming size.

More often than not Ring sends out the Bloom Night announcement between noon and 3 pm just before the flowers start opening that evening. As many as 2,500 people have made the last minute drive to Tohono Chul for Bloom Night. Last year, the count was only 1,000 people, possibly because the announcement didn’t go out until 3:45 pm and it was a Saturday.

It’s a Tucson thing, no doubt. We all know there’s not much to do here in sweltering June or July. But the botanical garden in Phoenix sends a busload to Tohono Chul for Bloom Night and a dozen people typically make a mad dash from New Mexico.

“I had a girl, she was Dutch, and she planned an entire vacation around Bloom Night,” Ring said. “I called her and she was in Flagstaff that day.”  The Dutch girl got to see the flower.

Tohono Chul opens at 6 pm for Bloom Night and closes at midnight to give the hawk moth some peace to get on with the pollinating chores. Admission is $5 for non-members and free for members. This will be the second year Tohono Chul will reopen at 5am for a member-only look at the end of the Queen of the Night’s life cycle.

“Bring a flashlight and a camera and wear sensible shoes,” Ring said. “We put up some luminarias but you are still tramping through a desert at night time.”

People do have bloom parties at their homes. You can buy potted Queen of the Night plants at Tohono Chul for $100 for a mature plant. Smaller plants go for $25 and $10 but you get no more than a stub for $10. The peniocereus greggii comes with no guarantees.

“If you plant one, it could be 10 years until you get a bloom of your own,” Ring said, “Or it may never bloom.”

Learn more at www.tohonochulpark.org

A Bright Future for Soccer in Tucson

June 1, 2013 |

As professional baseball sunsets in Tucson, FC Tucson is reached amazing heights even before a soccer-dedicated stadium is built.  FC Tucson starts its second season May 18 as a Premier Development League team, essentially AA soccer minor league. Beyond its own games, FC Tucson has made it a point to pair each of its games this season with games involving champion teams from a half dozen local soccer leagues. The Chapman Tucson Champions League was just announced April 23.

“We want to show what we’re building here is for the community, not just for a set of professionals,” team co-owner Jonathan Pearlman said.

The 2010s are the decade for soccer at all levels in Tucson. Before 2010, exactly zero Major League Soccer teams had played in Tucson. Now 10 teams – half the league – have taken to the pitch in Tucson, as have two national teams from Denmark and Canada, the first time Tucson hosted an international friendly soccer match.

In the past year, the long maligned Kino Sports Complex started transforming into Arizona’s premiere soccer facility.  What used to be Arizona Diamondbacks practice fields north of Ajo Way were converted into soccer fields in 2012. Right now, the field closest to the YMCA is FC Tucson’s home field, known as the Kino Sports Complex North Grandstand (Field No. 5). Next year, FC Tucson will play in what for now is being called the Kino Sports Complex North Stadium.

The $2.8 million stadium is a collaboration between FC Tucson and Pima County to build a 1,800-seat stadium with a half roof where Field No. 1 is now. Additional bleachers behind the goals bring seating to 2,480, and the 850-seat bleachers can be brought over from Field No. 5 to take capacity to 3,330.  “The stadium is expandable to 5,000 seats. That has meaning at the next level,” said FC Tucson co-owner Greg Foster, referring to the United Soccer League Pro level, the AAA minor league. He said, ultimately, a 15,000-20,000 soccer stadium is not impossible for the Kino Sports Complex, and neither is FC Tucson graduating to the USL Pro level.

The ground breaking ceremony for the stadium was April 25 and Pima County expects to have the stadium done by November.  Some 150 soccer enthusiasts showed up, including FC Tucson’s boisterous supporter group, the Cactus Pricks, who got repeated prompts from Pima County Supervisors Ramon Valadez and Richard Elias to give a soccer cheer.

As recently as 2010, soccer in Tucson equaled the Fort Lowell Shootout and community soccer leagues. Today, FC Tucson has deep relationships with MLS and half of its teams. Without much publicity in 2012, FC Tucson had the 12th highest attendance in its rookie season among 73 PDL teams – and the only reason the club didn’t rank higher was the Kino Sports Complex North Grandstand capacity topped out at less than 1,000.

FC Tucson is pioneering spring training for Major League Soccer. Nowhere else has a local soccer team assembled spring training packages for nine MLS teams that includes accommodations, meals, transportation, training fields, weight training facilities and opponents. MLS spring training has typically involved a team going somewhere and picking up a game.

The MLS team Sporting Kansas City was training in Phoenix and was looking for competition. FC Tucson co-owner Rick Schantz’s friend Peter Draksin, soccer coach at Grand Canyon University, suggested Schantz give Sporting Kansas City a call.

Just before the Kansas City connection, City Councilman Paul Cunningham called Foster and Schantz, both deeply involved in the Fort Lowell Soccer Club, to plant a seed to make more of soccer in Tucson. That paved the way for them to be able to offer Hi Corbett Field to Sporting Kansas City, which rounded up the New York Red Bulls for an exhibition game in 2010. “That was the birth of FC Tucson,” Schantz said.

Foster and Schantz expected maybe 3,500 people for the game, which attracted more than 10,000 and forced them to shut the gate with a long line of people not able to get in.  “It sent a message to us and MLS that spring training could be a spectator event,” Foster said.

FC Tucson has four owners, who refer to themselves as managing members: Foster, an attorney, as the legal officer; Chris Keeney, the chief business officer building ticket sales and sponsorships; Pearlman, the general manager; and Schantz serving as the team’s head coach.  They spent 2010 marketing Tucson as a spring training venue to MLS and the league’s teams, several of whom were sold on Kino even when they saw only baseball practice fields.

The first Desert Diamond Cup in March 2011 featured four MLS teams and the proceeds financed the first season for FC Tucson, which joined the Premier Development League the following year and was honored with Rookie Franchise of the Year accolades.

The four-team Desert Diamond Cup this year was preceded by FC Tucson Soccer Fest, which brought another six MLS teams to town. Half of the Major League Soccer teams played at Kino Sports Complex in one-month span in January and February. The Desert Diamond Cup final was telecast by NBC Sports.

Team owners see only a bright future for soccer in Tucson. Right now, FC Tucson is year-to-year with MLS spring training.  “We would like to be in a multi-year deal with MLS to host pre-season games,” Foster said. “We think, given the support for soccer in our region, Tucson might be an excellent candidate market for a USL Pro franchise. We’re reviewing that.”

______________

Pima County came up to bat quickly and decisively for FC Tucson. First, the county permanently converted one baseball field into a soccer field and temporarily converted four others for soccer in fall 2011. Those conversions became permanent after four MLS teams did their spring training here in 2012.

When talk came to a stadium dedicated to soccer last year, the Pima County Board of Supervisors moved swiftly to approve the $2.8 million project for a 1,800-seat stadium.  “Pima County is willing to compete with anybody to bring sports amenities to our community,” Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias said. “We understood the need to act quickly.”

FC Tucson drove home their mission to serve the community and that landed Elias and Pima County Supervisor Ramon Valadez hook, line and sinker.  “They learned the meaning of the word ‘partnership,’ not just with Pima County but with the community,” Valadez said.

FC Tucson managing members Jonathan Pearlman, Rick Schantz,
Greg Foster, and Chris Keeney.

Elias added: “They always talked to us about including youth soccer in the deal. That’s it.”

AAA baseball tanked spectacularly at Kino for 15 years, the Tucson community never accepting a stadium far on the South Side. Why should that be any different for soccer?

“We think Kino is very well located for soccer,” FC Tucson co-owner Greg Foster said. “It’s right off a freeway with very good access to the Northwest Side and Southeast and Green Valley and Sahuarita. What we’re seeing is soccer is being played all over the city. Kino really is surrounded by the soccer community.”

More than 5,000 adults play organized soccer in Tucson. Let alone thousands of children.  “Soccer has a much more interactive base than baseball,” co-owner and team coach Rick Schantz said.

Plus a crowd of 2,000 is fantastic for an FC Tucson match, while 2,000 at a Tucson Padres games is a pretty empty house.  The stadium should be done in November and FC Tucson expects to play its 2014 season there.

Soccer is all about crowd noise.  “With the half roof, you have captured sound,” Schantz said. “One thousand people will sound like five thousand. When a youth sees a stadium, that creates excitement.”

___________

So, what sort of soccer do you get at a FC Tucson match? Pretty damn good, the team owners insist. FC Tucson, after all, tied Sporting Kansas City this January at FC Tucson’s Tucson SoccerFest.

FC Tucson is a semi-pro team composed of college players and former professionals who have regained their amateur status. None of the players is paid at this point, but team co-owner and general manager Jonathan Pearlman insists MLS caliber soccer takes place at Kino.

“If you look at the top 11 players of an MLS team and you look at the next 11, the quality of our players would be comfortable on any MLS team,” said Pearlman, who recruits the team’s players.

The FC Tucson season is equally about Tucson community soccer league. A community soccer match will precede each FC Tucson home game. These will involve the newly established Chapman Tucson Champions League (CTCL), a series of matches that involve the major adult leagues in Tucson and Southern Arizona: Arizona Soccer League, Guanajuato AZ Soccer League, Menlo Soccer League, Tucson Metro Soccer League, Tucson Women’s Soccer League and the Tucson Adult Soccer League.

“Tucson has the potential to be a big soccer town,” said Tucson Women’s Soccer League president Doreen Koosmann. “If soccer players at every level work together, we could put Tucson on the soccer map. TWSL wants FC Tucson to succeed and we are taking every opportunity to assist them with this goal.”

At other times of the year, the Kino Sports Complex will also feature the Fort Lowell Shootout, the Far West Regional League twice a year, and the Arizona Youth Soccer Association stages state league, state cup and president’s cup matches at Kino.

“It’s a true community asset,” said FC Tucson co-owner Chris Keeney, who moved here from Houston to get in on the ground floor of a soccer emergence in Tucson after stints with the NFL Houston Texans and Major League Soccer teams D.C. United, Real Salt Lake and Columbus Crew.

 

FC Tucson Home Schedule

Each event is a double header starting with a community soccer group game, which starts at 5:15 p.m. All FC Tucson games start at 7:30 p.m. Admission to both games is $10. All games are played at the Kino Sports Center North Grandstand

 

May 18: Chapman Tucson Champions League Semifinal 1
May 18: FC Tucson vs. SoCal Seahorses
June 6: CTCL Men’s Semifinal 2
June 6: FC Tucson vs. OC Blues Strikers FC
June 8: TSAFC Women vs. St. George United
June 8: FC Tucson vs. Fresno Fuego
June 15: TSAFC Women v. Utah Starzz
June 15: FC Tucson vs. Real Phoenix
June 28: TSAFC Women
June 28: FC Tucson vs. Ventura County Fusion
June 30: CTCL Men’s Final
June 30: FC Tucson vs. Ventura County Fusion
July 6: TSAFC Women v. SC Del Sol
July 6: FC Tucson vs. CTCL Men’s Winner
July 13: CTCL Coed Championship
July 13: FC Tucson vs. Los Angeles Misioneros
July 20: CTCL Over 45 Men’s Championship
July 20: FC Tucson vs. BYU Cougars

Citizens Warehouse Captured in Print

May 1, 2013 |

Christopher Stevens. Photo by Alec Laughlin

Downtown historic warehouses teem with artists, though you likely wouldn’t guess it driving by the mostly century-old warehouses on Toole Avenue or the nearby Citizens Warehouse. Dozens and dozens of artists are hunkered away inside. Not much is happening streetside. And thus the entire artisan subculture goes largely unnoticed, other than during the pair of Open Studios Tours each year.

But the artists are there year-round, pretty much anonymously. Alec Laughlin counts among that number. He’s had a studio at the Citizens Warehouse since only January 2011. Before then, the acrylic and charcoal painter was truly anonymous, working out of his home.

In just a bit over two years encamped in the Historic Arts District, Laughlin has taken on the duties of president of the Warehouse Arts Management Organization (WAMO) and published “Citizens Warehouse,” a 140-page tome densely packed with select works by 24 artists that call the Citizens Warehouse their artistic home.

“The book is my big neon sign and marquee for the building,” Laughlin said. “I just want to shine a spotlight on the Citizens Warehouse and the artists that work inside. I just realized so much was going on in there with so much creative energy, but nobody knew it. When you drive by, this building is just a huge hulk that looks empty. I just realized the artists needed exposure.”

You can meet all the artists on May 9 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the book launch party at the Citizens Warehouse, 44 W. 6th St. Laughlin stresses there are “huge parking lots north and east” of the warehouse. Online promotional material, and Laughlin in conversation, make it a point to stress that the book launch party involves “beer and wine.”

“It’s mostly come and meet the artists. It’s a party in my studio. If you ask, artists might show you their studios,” Laughlin said. Laughlin scheduled the party for a Thursday evening. “I didn’t want to compete with other events or people going out to dinner.”

People who pre-ordered “Citizens Warehouse” can pick up the book at the party. The $40 book will also be for sale there. Otherwise, the book may be purchased online at citizensart.com, the Web site for the Citizens Artist Collective, which the warehouse artists established in 2010 to “manage the affairs and concerns of the artists in their relation to Citizens Warehouse management.”

The Collective and Lauglin’s work on the book has altered the dynamic within the Citizens Warehouse. “The artists are interacting with each other more,” Laughlin observed. “That’s a big difference. It’s so nice to have this artistic camaraderie.”  The book devotes four pages to each artist with five, six or seven artistic images and bio material. Julie Sasse, chief curator at the Tucson Museum of Art, wrote the forward. As much as the book is about the artists, the book does not ignore the building’s history.

The Citizens Warehouse has stood at 6th Street and Stone Avenue since 1929, first as a one-story structure, and then a second story was added in 1951. Architect Roy Place designed the warehouse with cast-in-place reinforced concrete that can support a five-story structure, something that has not yet happened. With taller buildings now rising around Downtown, who knows whether Place’s over-engineering will produce more levels.  If the name Roy Place sounds familiar, he also was the architect of the iconic Pima County Courthouse and the historic Montgomery Ward building that now houses the University of Arizona Downtown. These buildings and the warehouse all became downtown fixtures in the same year: 1929.  The warehouse was built for the Citizens Transfer & Storage Co., which was established in 1907 to deliver goods and merchandise from the railroad to merchants and individual. For the first two decades, Citizens operated on Congress Street before building the warehouse.

The Arizona Department of Transportation bought the Citizens Warehouse in 1984 along with 36 more warehouses and other properties with the intention to demolish them all to build a bypass road to link the Barraza-Aviation Parkway to Interstate 10. Most of the warehouses where spared as the City of Tucson took on the bypass and realigned the route to preserve warehouses that had spawned an arts district in the 1980s.

Citizens Warehouse Book cover

Artists have leased space inside the state-owned Citizens since 1994, sparked by arts space manager David Aguirre fielding requests for studio space and him observing a vacant Citizens Warehouse. The Warehouse Arts Management Organization is the warehouse’s master lease holder.  “The building is safe. What’s tenuous about it is, when the state plans to unload it, it would go up for auction,” Laughlin said. Artists have one primary objective: “Whatever needs to be done to preserve the building as artists’ studios and affordable space.”

Lease or own is a question floating around. Like with a home, leasing and owning each have their own advantages and drawbacks. Laughlin envisions the Collective, BICAS (a Citizens Warehouse tenant) and WAMO could own Citizens collectively. Or the City or some other entity could own it and the artist continue leasing.

“We do talk about it, the challenge you’d face,” Laughlin said. “We’d like to see ownership by an arts organization.”

The first run of “Citizens Warehouse” produced 500 copies with another 200 or 300 available. All the proceeds from the book will go to the Citizens Artist Collective for repairs and maintenance to the building and public programs.  “We need a new roof. It leaks really badly,” Laughlin said. “We want to try to engage with the community more with classes and field trips. We want to set up some scholarships.”

The Collective recently became a nonprofit and Laughlin established Eponymous Atelier as the publishing entity for the book and possible future books. The book was made possible in part through an initiative of the Tucson Pima Arts Council, in partnership with the Warehouse Arts Management Organization, and sponsored by a National Endowment for the Arts Our Town grant. To learn more about the initiative, visit www.tucsonpimaartscouncil.org.

A Garden Bears Fruit In The Wreckage of Rio Nuevo

January 23, 2013 |

The fledgling trees at Mission Garden bore fruit in early December just as they did 220 years ago in the same spot in shadow of A Mountain and is the only project of the scrapped Tucson Origins Heritage Park to bear any fruit at all through the planning, spading, grading, planting, and grassroots push by The Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace.

Figs, quince, apricots, sweet lime and plums are also growing on the acre that the founding members of The Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace Roger Pfeuffer, Raul Ramirez and Bill DuPont and dozens of other volunteers have tended this year. It’s the first phase to recreate the full 4 acres of the San Agustín Mission Garden from the 1780s and subsequent decades.

“This is all heritage fruit,” said Roger Pfeuffer, chair of The Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace, the non-profit that is building and operating Mission Garden. “This is from cuttings from trees that trace their lineage from trees 150 years ago.”

“These are European fruits brought into the area by Father Kino,” added Ramirez, secretary of The Friends and historian on Father Eusebio Kino.

The Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace started in 2009 as a loose group of west side supporters including Pfeuffer, DuPont, Ramirez, Diana Hadley, Gayle Hartmann and Cele Peterson. They saw an adobe compound enclosing nothing. Tucson Origins Heritage Park was touted as Rio Nuevo’s signature piece until the city pulled the plug in 2008. No construction ever got started on recreating Mission San Agustín and its Convento or the new children’s, University of Arizona and Arizona Historical Society museums. This also included the Mission Garden.

The Friends held a press conference on the site in 2009, uncertain just who would show up to support the creating of the garden. It was encouraging enough that The Friends then put on a forum attended by about 150 people in the historical preservation community.

“We saw there was an interest in this,” DuPont said. “People were willing to donate money and time.” DuPont is the founding chair of The Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace and direct descendent of Jose Ignacio Moraga, who was commander of the Tucson presidio in 1791.

“The person who really wanted to do this was Cele Peterson. She saw the wall. We assured her it was going to get done”, said DuPont.

The Friends formalized themselves by incorporating as a 501(c)3 with the Arizona Corporation Commission in 2010 and gaining the non-profit status in fall 2011. In the meantime, that led to clearing up just who had what claim on the Mission Garden grounds.

The Friends had been working with the Tucson Parks and Recreation Department, while the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District laid claim to all land associated with Tucson Origins. Mission Garden is Pima County Parks land and the City owns the wall.

The Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance, The Tucson Botanical Gardens and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the Arizona State Museum, the Arizona Humanities Council and the Audubon Society have all endorsed Mission Garden.

The Friends entered into five-year intergovernmental development and operating agreement in November 2011 with the City and the County. Since then, Rio Nuevo gave up all claims on Mission Garden.

“We didn’t do anything inside the walls until we got that agreement,” Pfeuffer said. “We’re obligated to raise $350,000 in those five years. Neither the City or County are under any financial obligation to support the garden.”

The Friends received a $15,000 grant from the City’s Historic Preservation Office that required a $15,000 match. That was the seed funding to plan the orchard. The Friends raised another $60,000 and received $35,000 from the Southwestern Foundation for Education and Preservation. An Americans with Disabilities Act grant added $38,000, and recently the Tohono O’odham Nation donated $39,600 for the garden’s Phase 2 work.

They have has raised $160,000 of the necessary $350,000 so far.

“This resonates with people on a number of levels,” Pfeuffer said. “Part of it is ‘Yeah, we’re going to do something people didn’t think could be done.’ Part of it is the heritage trees got a lot of interest.”  The orchard now has 119 trees and people have sponsored 42 trees for $1,000 a piece.

Tucson once had many orchards and gardens before Davis-Monthan Air Force Base changed the dynamics of Tucson in the 1940s. “It just brought back a lot of memories,” DuPont said. “My great grandfather had some of those orchards in his backyard. This is what we knew Tucson as.”

One of four acres is planted. The Friends started Phase 1 work on the site in January 2012 to install solar-powered irrigation, ADA trails, build a ramada and storage building and, in March, started planting the mission orchard. About 50 volunteers were involved in planting trees and building the ramada, and 20 volunteers are active on an extended basis.

The second phase should be planted in spring. That will include desert plants and also a timeline garden both along the western wall. The timeline garden will trace the progress of agriculture from the earliest settlers to the Hohokam, the O’odham, the Mexican era, the Territorial era and cotton representing the statehood era.

“What we want to show people is how native people gather food from desert plants,” Pfeuffer said.

The southern 2 acres have not been fully planned yet but will likely involve mission crops such as Sonoran wheat, Pima white wheat and cilantro. “We might put in an olive grove or maybe more fruit trees,” Pfeuffer said

But for Pfeuffer, the Mission Garden isn’t just a bunch of crops and orchards.

“I think of one word: Legacy,” he said.

The garden is open to the public every Saturday from noon to 4 pm through May and 8 am to noon in the summer.

This article appears courtesy of DowntownTucson.org

The Cadence: Bridging 4th Avenue and Downtown?

January 9, 2013 |

While construction swiftly proceeds for The Cadence student housing project, a leasing office, located at 218 N. 4th Ave., has already been open since the end of September signing University of Arizona students up at the 456-bed complex for the Fall 2013 semester, including 99 apartments with 167 beds on the Centro Garage.

Mostly UA dorm students have been the first to lease rooms that will become available in August 2013 at the eastern edge of Downtown. They will experience an upgrade from tight dorm room bunks to having their own bedroom and bathroom at The Cadence. The dorm prison ambiance gives way to a near resort setting at The Cadence, which has one six-story L-shaped structure next to Rialto Theatre and another three-story structure atop the Centro Garage across the street. “A lot of people renting with us are from the dorms,” Amy Kirby, The Cadence’s marketing and leasing director. “They go ‘Wow’ when they see the mock-up (apartment at the leasing office) and the plans. They are coming from an environment where they are packed like sardines.”

The swimming pool is the center piece at The Cadence. “I think the pool area is going to be where everybody wants to be,” said Stephany Gamboa, a Cadence marketing assistant and UA junior. “The fire pits are awesome.” The L-shaped building will run along the Rialto Theatre and Broadway with a one-story commercial section extending along Toole Avenue to create a tenant-only courtyard with the pool.

“The pool has an outdoor kitchen, Las Vegas-style cabana and you have a movie screen right over the pool,” Kirby said. The pool area also has a large fire pit. A second fire pit will be in the more intimate courtyard on the rooftop on the Centro Garage housing that will feature landscaping, seating and a barbeque. “That will be more of a chill space,” said Chad Izmirian, a Capstone Development senior vice president based in the Encinitas, CA, office near San Diego. Capstone is the developer of The Cadence. The fire pits delineate the basic Capstone vision that the apartment on the garage may be more desirable to older students and the Rialto side for younger students. The Cadence is not targeting freshmen.

The Cadence offers a broad array of options, including studios, one, two, three, four and five bedrooms. “From our perspective, it’s more about designing units for a variety of demographics,” Izmirian said. “An older student – seniors or graduate students – would be inclined to rent a unit with a lesser number of roommates. A sophomore or junior is probably more inclined to want more roommates.” The five-bedroom units – there are five of them – were almost an afterthought, not the size Capstone usually builds. But they have proven surprisingly popular in the early months of leasing. “What we’re seeing in leasing is the 4’s and 5’s are going the quickest. The 5’s are almost sold out,” Izmirian commented.

The Cadence will home 97 apartments with 289 beds next to the Rialto – land that used to hold the Greyhound bus station and the Centro Garage will  boast 99 apartments with 167 beds. In both buildings combined, there are 14 studios, 29 one-bedroom apartments, 71 two-bedroom, 62 three-bedroom, 14 four-bedroom and five five-bedroom apartments. No four- or five-bedroom units are on the garage.

Izmirian describes The Cadence as high-end urban student housing. The more traditional barren dorm room is becoming something of the past. “Students these days come in with higher expectations. Most students had their own bedroom and bathroom growing up. Technology is a huge thing. What you’re seeing is a bigger push for privacy”, Izmirian says.

Students are also gravitating  to more urban environments. “I think they like the location Downtown,” said Ashley Farmer, another Cadence marketing assistant and a UA sophomore. “It’s close to campus but still Downtown.”

The Cadence sits right at the junction of Downtown and 4thAvenue. Right now, zero people live within a couple hundred yards of where Toole, Congress, 4th Avenue and Broadway converge. In one year, some 450 college students will occupy the space, and the streetcar should be rolling by in both directions.

“It will be good for Downtown. I do believe this will bridge 4th Avenue and Downtown finally,” Kirby said.

Construction started in July – and the Centro Garage has already largely disappeared behind and underneath the framing for three stories of Cadence apartments on top and another two stories on the face. There is a ledge off the third level of the four-level garage upon which a dozen apartments are being built. Izmirian calls this the building’s “eye brow.”

“We’re further along on the garage,” Izmirian said. “We essentially are done with framing. The roof will be complete soon. We will start adding windows and the exterior sheathing of the building. We will wrap the building with moisture protection. After that you will see the start of stucco right after Christmas.“  Within the framed structure, all the internal mechanical, electrical and plumbing is now getting installed.

On the Greyhound/Rialto side, the concrete podium that will serve as the ground floor is complete as is the wood framing of the first two levels of student apartments. Three more levels of apartments have yet to be framed and should be in place by the start of February.

The ground floor, with an 18-foot ceiling, will offer indoor amenities such as a fitness room, an event room, a media room, a great room – “a big living room,” Izmirian said, a multi-sport simulator, a business center, a tanning center and a sauna.

The Cadence’s urban character will come with a built-in commercial level. The garage side will have 10,000 square feet of retail on street level, and the Rialto side will add another 9,500 square feet along Toole Avenue. This commercial space could be filled with restaurants, brew pub, a coffee shop, “some sort of market,” maybe some other types of shops.

“We’ve had lots of interest,” Izmirian said. “We are negotiating our first letter of interest. Within the last 30 days, we started marketing in earnest.”

The Cadence offers three studio options with 435 to 472 square feet rent for $975 to $990 per month. The three one-bedroom options measure 531 to 672 square feet with rents of $1,060 to $1,120. The three two-bedrooms options have 748 to 879 square feet and rent for $799 to $825 per bedroom. The four-bedroom option is 1,347 square feet and rent is $678 per bedroom. The five-bedroom apartments cost $708 per month per bedroom, measure 2,162 square feet and a 55-inch television is included in the living area.  Rent includes a room furnished with a bed, chair, desk and dresser. Each room also has a bathroom, a washer and dryer, and cable, Internet, water, sewer, pest control and trash are included. Students are responsible for phone and electricity.

For more information visit thecadencetucson.com.

This article originally appeared on DowntownTucson.org


 

That Corner Shop: Hydra

October 8, 2012 |

photo by Krysta Jabczenski

Eighteen years at the corner of Congress Street and 6th Avenue, the biggest change yet came to the avant-garde fashion shop Hydra this summer.

A new face joined owner Margo Susco’s one-woman show at her “store with the windows” – new maybe to Hydra clientele but a lifetime companion and best friend to Susco.

Her brother, Joey Susco, just returned to Tucson after 11 years in Rome, where he launched a sister Hydra II (ee-drah dué in Italian) store.

They have stunningly similar retail sensibilities, as if they were the brother and sister and best friends that they really are. Yet they are contrasting characters.

Margo had put up streetcar protest signs in her windows earlier in the year. Joey suggested she take them down when he came on board in August.

“I’m likeable but have an intensity that he doesn’t have,” Margo said.

Joey Susco brings a more mellow demeanor to Hydra.

“I’m back with a lot of new energy and ideas,” Joey said. “I’m updating the look, the racks, the merchandising. We’re getting a lot more Europeans lines. We’re bringing in vintage from the 50s, 60s and 70s.”

Joey replaced some of Margo’s slot wall displays with black grid walls. He got rid of the small wall behind which the shoe section was tucked away. Now the store is wide open. New spot lighting is in place. Soon black marble tile flooring will be installed in front of the jewelry showcases.

“I let Joey loose. I just say ‘Wow!’” Margo said.

The colors – inside and out – are Margo’s touches. She just adorned the interior with an upper layer of purple and lower layer of periwinkle lavender.

Q: You have the boldest exterior color scheme of any Downtown merchants. What are the colors?

Margo: “High gloss safety red and high gloss pure black.”

Q: Why such striking colors?

Margo: “I just think they look clean and sharp. It was important to me to get the right look. Part of being professional is making sure everything looks sharp.”

But what type of store is Hydra with its red-and-back color scheme? Most people think  sex, fetish, risqué, that kind of store. Margo Susco has yet to shatter the misconception of how she regards her store.

Q: What’s the theme of your store?

Margo: “I like to call it a diverse avant-garde boutique. We have women’s clothing, lingerie. The misconception is we’re a little weird, but I’m more of a high-end clothing boutique. You can be a little more conservative. You can be a little more saucy. We have costumes and dance wear. We have 50s bowling shirts. We have club wear and western wear for guys.”

Yes, there is lingerie and attire with locks and latches, but Hydra is much more mainstream these days.

“I can get you a nice dress to go to a wedding, a nice top to go to the office and the basic black dress.” Joey Susco said. “18 years ago it was more of a fetish store.”

Back then,  vinyl fashions was the hot thing in the alternative crowd. And now?

“Vinyl clothing is coming back in style. Corsets are coming back in style. This is for mainstream use now,” Margo marveled.

What Hydra really is, is a store for women, mostly aged 25 to 45 (and increasingly for men, too), who regularly come in and say “I want to look amazing,” “I’m going to a party and I need a fabulous dress” and “I want to step out of the norm and look fabulous.”

“I help them step outside the box. Absolutely,” Margo said.

Hydra late-2012 mixes what Margo Susco has been doing Downtown since Nov. 4, 1994, and what Joey had been doing since 2004 at Hydra II in Rome with his business partner, Luca Orlandi.

The Susco siblings (Kanella Conklin, a third sibling, earlier this year closed her Kanella’s shop on 4th Avenue. The fourth sibling, Nick, is the only one not in retail) were both born and grew up in Tucson and both moved away in their early adult years. Margo was gone for eight years before returning and opening Hydra.

Joey first went away to Los Angeles for five years and worked at Armani and Guess before embarking to Italy in 2001.

“I’m half Italian. I been to Rome a couple times before. I basically moved there as a foreigner,” he said. “I started working at a retail store. I didn’t speak Italian but a lot of customers were tourists.”

Joey also taught English and was assistant to a photographer.

“Meanwhile, I was just keeping my ears and eyes open,” he continued. “They didn’t have much of a selection or choice. You do have a lot of Goth kids and glam rocker kids but there was nothing there for them. So I decided to open a shop.”

Hydra II was similar to Tucson’s Hydra, but Joey Susco carried more European fashions, and he also had a lot of vintage cowboy boots and western wear, which were hugely popular, especially among tourists from American, Germany – and Texas.

“I was working with so many stylists. It amazed me,” Joey said.

Alas, as successful as Hydra II was, high Italian taxes, the decimated Italian economy and Susco family matters convinced Joey and Luca to sell the shop. Joey returned to Tucson – and Luca Orlandi joined him and is now here, too.

“I had money to invest and I was thinking of America,” Orlandi said. “For me, it’s a change of life. If you have good ideas, it’s easier in America.”

The Suscos are thinking of expanding to Phoenix. Orlandi may operate that store.

Margo said Hydra is so popular in Phoenix that in some Phoenix retail rankings Hydra is listed as the best in Phoenix.

“Joey says ‘I can’t believe the number of Phoenix people that shop here,” Margo said. “There’s already a buzz going on in Phoenix.”

They have been scouting the Phoenix metro for an ideal location for another Hydra store.

“We’re hoping in maybe a year opening something in Phoenix,” Margo said. “We’re keeping our eggs in this basket for now, but we’re doing the legwork.”

Joey’s arrival gives Margo a chance to reduce her hours at the store, really, for the first time since she opened Hydra.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re away from the store?

Margo: “I love being outdoors. Being outside helps me clear my head. I enjoy hiking. I have a 1966 Chevelle Malibu. I love to ballroom dance. I’m happiest listening to Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller.”

This article appears courtesy of the Downtown Tucson Partnership

Presidio Fashion Exchange

September 8, 2012 |

Call to artists, designers, sellers of unique items.

Dinnerware Artspace, 425 W. 6th St., is beginning a new Saturday urban market called the Presidio Fashion Exchange in its parking lot.

This event will be every Saturday morning from 8 a.m. to noon-ish.

Tucson area designers and artists who use primarily repurposed and recycled materials are invited to offer their wares. This includes fashion, accessories, and art.

This is an uncurated event, open to anyone. It’s free to set up. Tables and chairs provided. Advertising will be primarily online.

Sell your unique articles of clothing. This is a great Saturday morning event for independent designers and artists. The public is looking for quality, originality, and cleverness of method in design.

Presidio Fashion Exchange is meant to show how sustainable design is on the forefront of fashion in Tucson. It’s primarily recycled clothing, art, some household items, and collectibles.

Looking to promote your brand? This market is for you.

What’s new in the fashion universe? These brands are small, regional, and up and coming. Looking to write about local fashion? This is the place. Searching for style? This is the place.

Find that truly unique piece of jewelry.

There will also be a District Clothing Trade table for clothing waiting to be repurposed. Bring at least 5 gently used items for the table. Take as much as you want.

Participants RSVP with David Aguirre at DinnerwareArtspace@gmail.com, or text 520-869-3166.

This article appears courtesy of DowntownTucson.org

Congress Street Awaits Saint House, Lulu’s Shake Shoppe and New Things for the Rialto Building

September 2, 2012 |

This article is from DowntownTucson.org

The people behind the popular HUB Restaurant & Ice Creamery, Playground Lounge, 47 Scott and Scott & Co., and the Rialto Exhibition Center are ready to make their next moves as soon as streetcar construction wraps up on Congress Street.

All of it revolves around the empire of Scott Stiteler, owner of the Congress Street properties on both sides of the street between Fifth Avenue and the Arizona Avenue alley and co-owner of the Rialto Exhibition Center building across from Hotel Congress.

A new life is coming for the Rialto Exhibition Center, hints Stiteler, who co-owns the building with Don Martin.

“We couldn’t have scripted that better to have four exhibitions in succession,” Stiteler said.

But time has come for perhaps something else in the historic building attached to the Rialto Theatre.

Stiteler has eight spaces ranging from 800 to 1,500 square feet on the three blocks. So far, eateries of one sort or another fill much of his holdings in the One North Fifth Apartments commercial space at 245 E. Congress and across the street from 256 E. Congress to 278 E. Congress.

“I’ve been very mindful to keep space open for retail,” Stiteler said.

“That’s highly coveted,” he said about the vacant space between HUB and Playground. All of his available space garners interest but he has never rushed to lease to just any business. “I get lots of offers. I’m waiting for that eureka moment when I say ‘perfect.’”

Kade Mislinski is at it again, too, in his share of Stiteler’s property, this time with what he’s calling Lulu’s Shake Shoppe, 270 E. Congress St.

Mislinski is the out-of-the-box visionary behind Playground Lounge, where he recreated the pleasures of the childhood playground, and HUB Restaurant & Ice Creamery, where ice cream gets equal billing with beef and beer.

Lulu’s follows the same scratch-your-head wackiness. The name may be shake shoppe but Mislinski sees it as a cross between a little league baseball snack bar (expect hot dogs) and a French fry/falafel stand in Amsterdam, where fries come with mayonnaise.

Lulu’s will have four standard shake flavors and two special flavors every day.

Lulu’s will be located behind HUB, serving out of the same window as Chocolate Fox. Chocolate Fox will continuing delivering chocolate creations during the day, and Lulu’s will do its thing from 5 p.m. to 3 a.m. seven days a week.

“I think we need a pick-up window. We need a snack bar Downtown.”

Lulu’s Shake Shoppe opens for business on Oct. 15 at 5 p.m.

Travis Reese and Nicole Flowers are finally ready for their Congress Street debut after two years on a stretch of Scott Avenue that an Olympic long jumper could leap sidewalk-to-sidewalk.

Reese and Flowers instantly became media darlings when they opened 47 Scott in May 2010, followed next door with Scott & Co. in October 2010.

Sunset magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Los Angeles times and numerous airline magazines have short-listed 47 Scott as a Tucson dining must.

“I just got an email. Food & Wine wants to do something,” Reese said.

Travel and dining media will undoubtedly have more to write about once Reese and Flowers open their Saint House, 256 E. Congress, in the former Sharks Lounge location at the westernmost extent of Stiteler’s Congress holdings.

“We have just been wanting to work with Scott because he has such a vision,” Reese said. “We wanted to work with people doing such great projects. 47 Scott was always supposed to be the start of something. We never knew what.”

They have dreamed up a Caribbean theme for Congress Street.

“Saint House is based on cuisine where rum is made, from Venezuela to Miami,” Reese said. “We are encompassing food from that region. We wanted to do something unique.”

Reese said the ambition is to open Saint House before the gem show.

“January 1 would make us happy. Jan. 20 would make us just as happy,” Reese said.

 

FORSight

August 20, 2012 |

It’s not really about the buildings or furnishings for married architects Miguel Fuentevilla and Sonya Sotinsky.  Perhaps you know their names, perhaps you don’t. You do, however, most certainly know their interior designs.  They are the design team behind HUB Restaurant & Ice Creamery with its upside-down lamp shades, Playground Lounge and its swings suspended above the bar and marbles ground into the floor, Downtown Kitchen+Cocktails, Borderlands Brewing Co. and the new eatery opening soon at 50 E. Broadway.

Beyond Downtown, Fuentevilla and Sotinsky have delivered their whimsical touches to North (in Tucson, Austin, Denver and Phoenix), Zinburger, Blanco, Tavolino (and its San Diego sister, Isola Pizzeria), Sir Vezas and dozens more restaurants, offices, and homes they have designed from the ground up.

“We definitely like to have fun moments with all our restaurants,” Sotinsky said.

They like to have fun moments with any waking moment, it seems – their conference room has dark blue Astroturf as carpet and running up one wall – Sotinsky calls it “shag” – and the open office area has white Astroturf on one wall (normally used for hash marks and lines on sports fields).  “We have one person a day just come in to touch it,” Fuentevilla said.

Fuentevilla and Sotinsky are the names behind FORSarchitecture + interiors, 245 E. Congress St. The’ve been in business for fifteen years, and since January 2012 in the Congress Street location.  FORS stands for ‘Fuentevilla OR Sotinsky‘. Not “and” – rather, “or.”  They are both equally colorful personalities à la Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell or Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, except Fuentevilla and Sotinsky bring this wit and sparkle to the world of architecture and interior design.

“People sometimes come to us and say ‘I just want a set of drawings to get a permit.’ Really?” Fuentevilla said. “We try to get them to buy into the project, so they put value into that design. They get to the point where they say ‘I have to have that faucet.”  How does this transformation unfold?  Clients have to complete a multi-page questionnaire that addresses matters such as who are you and how do you live, so that FORS can create a unique project tailored to the client.  “Our philosophy is of storytelling through our projects,” Sotinsky said. “Even if they don’t see our story, they feel something experientially.”  It really isn’t just about buildings and interiors for the FORS couple – it’s about creating an environment.  “It’s giving it a life,” Fuentevilla said. “It’s more about a space than architecture. I think people want to be part of something, belong to something.”

Sotinsky and Fuentevilla met at architecture school at the University of Arizona.  Sotinsky grew up in New Jersey but had an aunt and uncle who lived in Tucson and grandparents who snowbirded in the city.  Fuentevilla is a Tucson native, born to Cuban refugee parents who were recruited as faculty for the opening year at Pima Community College.  Sotinsky went on to graduate school at UC Berkeley and Fuentevilla followed her. They married while living in Berkeley and joined separate architecture firms. Sotinsky’s firm tended toward residential projects, and Fuentevilla’s focused on commercial projects.  To this day, if there even is a distinction between the two, Sotinsky leans residential and Fuentevilla commercial.  But since the 2008 economic downturn, residential architecture has gone on the shelf, and FORS does more interiors than architecture.

Even when they designed custom homes, both easily crossed over from commercial to residential.  “It’s not a straight line at all. On every single project we collaborate,” Sotinsky said.

She is the lead on some projects, he takes the lead on some projects.  “When she’s the lead, she has the final say. When I’m the lead, I have the final say,” Fuentevilla said.

Before they started FORS, while they still lived in Berkeley, Fuentevilla was the lead designer re-imagining the ghastly 1970’s Park Mall into Park Place with its barrel vaulting and endless skylights.  “When Miguel told me he got that as a job, I just laughed, because the place was such a dog,” Sotinsky recalled.

They returned to Tucson in 1997 after seven years in the Bay Area to start their own architecture firm.

“I was hugely pregnant when we moved here,” Sotinsky said.

“She was eight months pregnant and we had to paint the house,” Fuentevilla added.

“We wanted to open a business, buy a house and have a kid – all in the same month,” Sotinsky continued.

Starting a company coincided with wanting to enter an architecture competition put on by Metropolitan Home magazine. The only problem: they didn’t even have a business name yet. On the spur of the moment they came up with FORS.

FORS has had high-profile projects all along, but until this year their office was anything but high-profile. They worked out of their Sam Hughes Neighborhood home until moving onto Congress this year.  “I did North (restaurant) in Austin out of my bedroom,” Fuentevilla said.

They actually had a back bedroom that served as an office, and in 2007 they added an office to their home with a separate entrance.  “We were laboring anonymously,” Fuentevilla said. “Now we are front and center.  People are recognizing us.”

Last year they realized they should be Downtown.  “We were trying to convince people that Downtown is this great place and we were holed up in Sam Hughes,” Fuentevilla said. “It was time to be part of the urban fabric of Downtown.”  Sotinsky was less enthusiastic, at first.

“Initially, I was opposed to moving out. I’ll have to drive to work,” she said.  (Mind you, they live barely 2 miles from Congress and 5th Avenue.)  “Now being down here and feeling all the energy, I just love being here on a daily basis.”

FORSarchitecture+interiors is in the street-level commercial addition to the One North Fifth Apartments.  Their neighbors are Sparkroot, Xoom Juice, Yoga Oasis and Sacred Machine.

Their landlord is Scott Stiteler, who owns the One North Fifth complex, the Congress Street buildings across the street with HUB and Playground and he co-owns the Rialto Building with the Mars and Beyond exhibit.  FORS designed the interiors of HUB and Playground and is master planning the future use of the Rialto Building.

You’d think it’s a natural progression that the FORS office ended up in Stiteler’s building. Sotinsky was aghast when Stiteler suggested it:

“Why don’t you go in here,” Stiteler offered.

“That’s horrible,” Sotinsky responded. “You don’t put an office in a store front.”

“It will be great,” Stiteler encouraged.

“Now we can’t leave,” Sotinsky said. “Next month we are going to do a tiny little gift shop up front with modern gifts and small housewares.”

FORSarchitecture+interiors is located at 245 E. Congress, #135, 520.795.9888 and at ForsArchitecture.com This article appears courtesy of DowntownTucson.org

Photo, top: Miguel Fuentevilla and Sonya Sotinsky, by David Olsen. Photo, bottom: Blanco by Bill Timmerman, courtesy of FORS